Horribly early start this morning as we have a fair amount of country to cover to get to our destination at St Moritz. We said a sad farewell to our beautiful Bern hotel, the Belleview Palace, who had changed their magnificent flower arrangements overnight.
We did, however, have one stop off just outside the village of Keirns at a Swiss farm to meet the farming family. Grandmother, father and mother and two of their three daughters were all done up in their traditional Swiss costume.
The little one looked particularly cute and reminded us of Lilliana.
Their dairy herd is only 17 cows but they have a fair bit of mechanisation in their operation. They seemed really nice but since none of them had any English and apart from our guide we didn’t know any Swiss German, conversation was very limited but they seemed really nice people.
We pressed on through the Swiss countryside and stopped for lunch at one of their beautiful roadside servos Our route had had to be amended from our planned one as the unseasonably cold weather with its accompanying snow had closed two of the three available passes through the mountains to our destination so we had to go via the last one remaining open; the Julier Pass.
The road in places was very narrow and the countryside grew whiter and the trees shorter till finally there were no trees and just white snow as far as the eye could see. We had reached the top of the Julier Pass.
Here is the obligatory photo to commemorate this event.
Finially we made it into St Moritz. The town surrounded a large frozen lake where they apparently hold horse races during the winter months.
Here is the view from our room. It was very nice but the temperature was below freezing when we got there and everywhere around here they tend to set the heat settings for the rooms on maximum heat so the rooms tend to be hot and stifling. Our solution was to open the door from our room to the patio and let the freezing air in for a bit to cool it down.
Hardys’ Travels 